
ELLIOT LAKE, ON – The DiversityCanada Foundation wants the Governor in Council to quash a section of the Wireless Code of Conduct regarding prepaid wireless service cards, after the CRTC declined to do so.
The Foundation and the National Pensioners Federation submitted a joint petition Monday seeking to overturn a provision in the Code that they say “permits Bell, Rogers, Telus and other wireless providers to place expiry dates on cash held in the accounts of 3.7 million prepaid wireless consumers”.
The petition claims that the CRTC breached its duty of procedural fairness by ignoring evidence that prepaid wireless accounts hold cash, and by failing to explain the legal basis on which it decided to permit the phone companies to seize this cash from consumers' accounts. It also points out that as of May 1st, the federal government banned banks from placing expiry dates on the cash held in so-called prepaid credit card accounts, and demands that wireless providers be similarly restricted.
As Cartt.ca reported, the CRTC in March denied a similar request made by DiversityCanada, after concluding that its application failed to “demonstrate substantial doubt as to the Commission’s determinations in the Wireless Code Decision”.
According to DiversityCanada, Canadians that use prepaid wireless services lose $138 million each year when wireless companies "unjustly seize the cash in their prepaid wireless accounts". Those impacted include “some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable consumers, such as pensioners, youth, minimum-wage workers, the unemployed and newcomers, who can least afford to have their funds unjustly taken from them”.
“We've protested this injustice before the CRTC since the Wireless Code was released,” said Celia Sankar, executive director of the DiversityCanada Foundation, in a news release. “However, the CRTC has bent over backwards to protect the wireless companies. Now, we have no choice but to ask the Harper Government to step in, and to truly put consumers first by stopping big telecom companies from grabbing cash from the accounts of pensioners and other vulnerable Canadians and claiming that the money 'expired'.”
“Pensioners are on fixed incomes, so every dollar counts,” added Herb John, president of the National Pensioners Federation, the other signatory to the petition. “Aging Canadians want to see responsible action from the Government to protect the funds of prepaid wireless consumers.”
The petition asks the Governor in Council to vary the relevant section of the Wireless Code so as to overturn its endorsement of prepaid wireless balance expiry, and to order that the CRTC reconsider the entire issue.